She shakes her head, makes a face, and finally shrugs her shoulders.
This is what has been bothering me.
“Process of elimination,” I tell her. “There was the killer. Let’s assume he or she dropped it. There was Tony. Let’s assume that he had bigger fish to fry, phone numbers to destroy. He didn’t see it. Perhaps he was too busy with other matters. There was you and me, and we didn’t touch it.”
“So where did it go?” she says.
“There was one other person,” I tell her.
She gives me a look like this doesn’t compute.
“Kimberly,” I say.
“The little girl?” Her eyes go wide.
I nod my head slowly.
“But she was questioned.”
“Right, she was. And she said something,” I tell her. “Something that didn’t register immediately, because I was concentrating on other things. It’s been rattling around in my brain for weeks. Kimberly never repeated it on the stand in open court. But that first time, when the lawyers and the judge had her alone in the courtroom, she said it.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t sure myself at first whether I heard it or whether I dreamed it, so I ordered a transcript of that earlier hearing, the motion by Kline that the little girl be questioned behind closed doors.”
I dig this, the transcript, from my briefcase. I had marked it with a highlighter two nights ago and now I read it to Lenore.
“Listen.” I find my place. “Radovich is questioning her.
“KIMBERLY: They were really mad.
“THE JUDGE: Who?
“KIMBERLY: Mommy.
“THE JUDGE: Do you know if the other voice was a lady’s voice, like Mommy’s, or was it a man’s?
“KIMBERLY: I heard Mommy. She was crying.
“THE JUDGE: Yes. But did you hear the other voice?
“KIMBERLY: No response.
“THE JUDGE: Did your mother say anything?
“KIMBERLY: She said ‘No!’ She was real mad.
“THE JUDGE: Did you hear a man’s voice?
“At this point I objected,” I tell Lenore. “There was an exchange between myself and Radovich over his questioning. He was offering suggestions that were not helpful.”
She looks at me, nods, and smiles, one lawyer to another.
“He overrules me and then he gets back into it, some questions about where she was and the stuffed bear. Listen.
“KIMBERLY: Binky was out with Mommy. They both got hurt.
“THE JUDGE: Binky must be a pretty good friend?
“KIMBERLY: Binky keeps all my treasures.
“THE JUDGE: I had a fuzzy little friend when I was your age, too. We were real buddies. I could talk to him about anything. Tell me, Kimberly, did you see how Mommy got hurt that night?”
Radovich is like most adults who speak to little children; we do not listen. He had walked right over her line, and never even heard what she had said, nor had any of the rest of us in that room that day. She was telling us what she saw. What she got, and where it went.
“The treasure,” says Lenore.
“Right. Into the belly of the bear,” I tell her.
“But. .”
“I saw her do it in court, the second time,” I say. “With a button she’d ripped off her dress. She fed it to the bear.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. She put her finger in the bear’s mouth, and when she took it out, the button was gone.”
“So you think whatever was there that night. .”
“Is now inside that bear.”
“And you want me. .” She doesn’t finish the thought. “No way,” she says.
It is a tactical dilemma: what to do concerning my suspicions regarding the bear and what may be contained inside it. The problem is that I have no evidence, nothing sufficient to open the bear in front of the special master. To risk doing so in front of the jury could result in catastrophe if there is nothing inside, or worse, if what it contains incriminates my own client. I do not believe this is so, but I am not foolish enough to take the risk.
I’m looking at her, wide-eyed and expectant.
“No way.” There’s a finality to her tone. Conversation over, business done.
Lenore has been given a ring of keys by her friend the judge. Among them is a master key, issued to every judge in this building and a select number of other officials. It will unlock any of the doors along the outer corridor leading to courtrooms on this floor, and to the clerk’s office near Radovich’s chambers, where the evidence cart is now secured.
“Tomorrow morning they move it.” I tell her about Radovich’s order to the clerk that the evidence be secured under lock and key during our weeklong break. “Our last chance.”
“No way.” She repeats this. “We get caught, it’s our ticket.”
“You didn’t worry about that the night you dragged me to Hall’s apartment.”
“I was drunk,” she says. “And angry.”
“You owe me,” I tell her. “For getting me into this. For telling me that Tony wasn’t there that night.”
“I believed him.”
“And now? Who do you believe? What do you think happened that night?”
Her face is a mask of conflicted questions. “I don’t know,” she says.
“Maybe it’s time we found out.”
CHAPTER 32
We wait for nearly two hours for things to quiet. A team of janitors have completed their chores on this floor, and a security guard has done his rounds, so that we have now timed his comings and goings.
The guard rattles the outside door to the courtroom and disappears down the broad public corridor. I can hear the bell as the elevator arrives, then the hushed silence as it whisks him to another floor.
Lenore and I make for the back door and the private hallway that leads to Radovich’s courtroom. The corridor itself is well-lit, a wall of windows on one side that look out on the street. It is devoid of any furnishings, antiseptic white walls and light vinyl floors punctuated by periodic doors leading into the various courtrooms. Each door is identified by its department number, painted in large green numerals.
Lenore has given me the keys, so I lead the way. We do not have far to travel. A single complex of rooms separates us from Radovich’s court.
“Don’t look now, but we’re being watched,” says Lenore.
“Hmm?”
“The ceiling.”
I glance up and see it, a recessed security camera.
“Smile and talk,” she says. “Just two people working late. Just us little beavers rifling evidence.”
I have brought along a small flashlight and one of Nikki’s old crochet hooks for this purpose, something with which to deftly probe the belly of the bear. If I find anything I will leave it, recall Kimberly to the stand, and ask specifically what she fed to the bear the night of the murder, laying a foundation for a more thorough examination of the evidence, this time before the jury.
We pass under the fixed camera which is now aimed in the direction over our heads and behind us. Off screen for the moment, we stop.
The door to Radovich’s chambers is forty feet down the corridor near another camera in the ceiling.
“One thing’s for certain,” she says, “we’re going to be on film.”
“Let’s just hope they’re not watching the screens right now.”
Either way we will have to chance it.
“No furtive gestures, look natural,” I tell her. “We have legitimate business, authority to be here,” I say.
“Fine. If we get caught, you do the talking,” she says.
“If we get caught, we’ll leave that to our lawyer.”
“You really know how to calm a girl’s fears.”
We close the distance to the door, Lenore talking all the while, a nervous monologue in my ear, so that it’s not necessary for me to respond.
When we get to the door she is between me and the camera, masking for an instant my action with the keys in the lock. It takes me several tries until I find the right one, then it turns in the cylinder. The door clicks open, and in a breath we are inside; it closes quietly behind us.